“And she was fair as is the rose in May.” — Geoffrey Chaucer
roses
All posts tagged roses
“They are not long, the days of wine and roses.
Out of a misty dream, our path emerges for a while, then closes, within a dream.”Â
― Ernest Dowson
If I Could Tell You
W H Auden
Time will say nothing but I told you so
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.
The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reason why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.
“Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things,our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”  ― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Naval Treaty
“Life is painful.
It has thorns, like the stem of a rose.
Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem.
The flower is yourself, your humanity.
Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.”
― Daisaku Ikeda
A flower’s fragrance declares to all the world that it is fertile, available, and desirable, its sex organs oozing with nectar. Its smell reminds us in vestigial ways of fertility, vigor, life-force, all the optimism, expectancy, and passionate bloom of youth. We inhale its ardent aroma and, no matter what our ages, we feel young and nubile in a world aflame with desire.
Diane Ackerman —Â A Natural History of the Senses.
“You have not grown old, and it is not too late
To dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.”
Of Roses
And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest,
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air,
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare.
Maverick Mist 